


The Treehouse

by ive_got_you_clovered



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Arguing, Fighting, Humanstuck, Just a little thing I've been thinking about for a long time, M/M, Physical Abuse, background dirk/equius but i didn't want to add it to the main tags, they're friends - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26772337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ive_got_you_clovered/pseuds/ive_got_you_clovered
Summary: Dirk needs someone to patch up a stab wound and Equius's neighbor shows up with a similar problem.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	The Treehouse

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not much of a one-shot person, but I'm still pretty proud of this. Hope y'all enjoy!

⇒ Be Dirk Strider

Your side is bleeding more than usual as he kicks you down the stairs, released for the night. Usually you’d go to your room with Dave, but he’s with Rose and Roxy tonight, and this is too much for you to stick up yourself without it being sloppy. Your eyes are stinging, arms burning with cuts too small to bleed or patch and big enough to torture you as they move through the air. He won’t care if you leave, you decide. Maybe you can get some help from someone who asks very few questions.

And hey, maybe you want to be in that treehouse with your robotics partner for another reason, first aid kit aside. But you don’t have to say that.

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering centaursTriumph [CT] \--  
TT: Hey Equius.  
CT: D--> Hello, Dirk.  
CT: D--> What is going on?   
TT: Long story short, I have a stab wound that needs dealt with promptly.  
TT: Can I come over?  
CT: D--> Yes, absolutely.  
CT: D--> My father isn’t home, but I can call him. Should I alert the authorities?  
TT: I would prefer you didn’t call either of them.   
CT: D--> Is this a bigger issue?  
TT: I’m currently in the treehouse.  
CT: D--> Dirk.  
\-- timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering centaursTriumph [CT] \--  


He looks out of his window and groans, rubbing the bridge of his nose dramatically. You’re currently sitting on a branch of the oak tree, holding your side, and also desperately trying to hold a blank face as his look of frustration fades into a gut wrenchingly soft, worried one. “Dirk? What- I’ll be there in a moment. Get inside, if you’re able.”

You shuffle into the treehouse and take a moment before he gets there to release the shuddering breath you’ve been keeping in. It hurts, it always does. Unfortunately for you, there’s something about here that makes it hurt a little more. Maybe it’s the moonlight filtering in through the slightly warped slats in the roof, or the random robotic limbs scattered around, or the way Equius looks at you, so worried and gentle and the way he can make such small things with delicacy you never thought was possible with such big hands. 

Huh.

That hurts too, but for a different reason that you don’t want to adknowledge.

“I’m here. I brought, um, bandages, and various painkillers, and anti-bacterial materials that might help, along with stitching supplies.” Equius says, interrupting your emotional fugue and crawling into the treehouse with practiced delicacy. He looks tired, rightfully so, and you feel a pang of guilt. It doesn’t show on your face only by a large measure of practice. 

“Thanks, Eq. If you want to go back to sleep, that’s okay, I can probably-” 

“Absolutely not, you heathen. Show me your stab wound or I am driving us to the urgent care right now, do you hear me?”

You sigh dramatically, trying to lighten the mood, and lift up your shirt enough to show where Bro sliced you up. It’s not as bad as others, but this slice cuts open existing scar tissue and hurts so much that you wince as it hits the chilly air. It carves up your side, blood starting to clot a dark wine-red and crust painfully at the sides, and goes a few inches deep.

“Dear god, Dirk.”

“You know how to do stitches, right?”

“...I do. Hold still, please, this will hurt.”

You lean your forehead against his chest subconsciously as Equius starts stitching up your side with some surgical thread (Why does he have that?) feeling the rise and fall of his chest as you’re saved from bleeding out. It’s quiet here. You’ve never lived in the suburbs, but you think you’d like it. There’s much less stimulation, and the rustle of the leaves keeps you grounded as he finishes up.

“Dirk.”

“Equius.”

He shuffles backwards, and you resist the urge to move forward and re-fill the gap between you. Needy, much? 

“What happened? And don’t you start on some-”

Before you can make up some bullshit and cover for your slip up, the stairs for the treehouse start creaking and a figure pulls themself up with a raspy groan. You’d be on edge if you didn’t recognize the silhouette, and if Equius didn’t pull them up with an exasperated sigh.

“Ayyy, Zahhak, patch me up before-” Vriska starts, drawling until she sees you and stops short. There’s a brief moment of eye contact, her gaze flickering to your side and yours to her black eye and split lip. Silent acknowledgement is made.

“There’s an ice pack in the minifridge. Put it on your eye and tell me if there are any lacerations I should know about. Be honest, please. Dirk, I’m sure you know Vriska.”

“Yeah, yeah, Zahhak, we know each other. Like attracts like, y’know?” 

Equius huffs softly and gently prods at the cuts and bruises that scratch down Vriska’s sides. They look a lot like claw marks, but claws don’t give people black eyes and you think if Vriska has wrestled a bear or something like that she’d look a lot more victorious, or a bit less scared. 

Eventually, he sits you both down with water bottles on nearby beanbags. You’ve started to distract yourself by picking a hole in the side when he says, “Now, for the perhaps more pressing matter of I’d like to know what exactly happened to the both of you.”

You feel Vriska tense at your side, but you’re just… quiet. “I can’t tell you, Equius.”

“I’d like to make it clear that anything said in this treehouse is never going to leave this treehouse. That applies for anything either of you hears as well.” A glance is sent in Vriska’s direction, but instead of being accusatory it’s comforting, and you’re suddenly under the impression that maybe he thinks she’s the one that wants to keep secrets. That’s two of you.

“I’m not talking about it, Eq.”

“Same dice with Strider. I can’t- we can’t. This can’t be fixed by punching something.”

You glance at her, still mostly blank faced, although it’s starting to slip into feeling with exhaustion. Vriska doesn’t look small. Vriska can’t look small, but her normal command of all of the attention in the room has faded to a faint hum of influence. They’re a strange pair, her and Equius, and you find yourself trying to puzzle out the relationship there. Sibling-like, perhaps- bonds built in trauma and secrecy feel important. 

“I am aware.”

You sigh and bop his sweaty arm, mumbling, “Glad that’s settled, then. Secret keeping gang with exactly zilch secrets because all of us are stains upon the shitty apron of the universe.” 

Equius snickers a little. “I suppose we are all outcasts in our own right.”

“Hey, watch it! I have allllllll of the friends. Everyone adores me.”

The two of you turn to her and raise a single, skeptical eyebrow in unison. Vriska groans and slumps down further into her beanbag chair, muttering something about nerds under her breath and adjusting her arm to settle more comfortably. After a moment of silence that had the opportunity to be awkward but somehow wasn’t, she relented.

“Fine. You people are so irritating. Maybe I have like, two friends total. It’s enough. At least I’m just too cool to be bothered with social interaction and  _ can _ do it, unlike Mr. Horse fetishist over here.”

“Oof, low blow, Vriska. He just made sure you didn’t bleed out after getting attacked by some rabid cat,” you comment, and she hisses. You shrug. Equius sighs. You get the impression he sees you two as particularly intelligent children bickering and feel a pang of pity. 

“I wasn’t going to bleed out, god.”

You shrug again.

Equius starts to stand, leaving you tilted to one side and Vriska startled. “I believe I am going to go back to rest. You two are free to stay here for the evening if you wish, as long as you’re at school on time. Good night.”

Oh god, you don’t want him to leave. Vriska says loud and clear in her expression she doesn’t want him to either, but before either of you can protest the trapdoor in the floor shuts with a clack, and you’re left alone with someone of an equal and opposite caliber of awfulness. Said foil watches him leave and sinks down into the plush with a long breath.

“...”

“...spit it out, Strider, I don’t have all night.”

“I have nothing to say.”

She breathes out again and sits up a little to glare at you. Your glasses provide a lovely wall between your own eyes and the force of her stare, keeping the tears that would well up if you were a lesser man at bay for now. “You obviously need to say something. You’re so full of yourself I’m surprised you’re not already talking some bullshit.”

“Ouch.”

“Oh, fuck off, you know I’m right,” she retorts, and you know she is. Of course you’re full of yourself, it’s you, Dirk Strider, complete asshole and destroyer of every life you touch. That little thing’s as much a part of you as your skin. Doesn’t mean you enjoy having it spat at you by Vriska Serket.

There’s a long moment of silence, that lasts more like ten minutes. Both of you stew in your pain and your thoughts, like the self-centered fools you are, and you find yourself wandering back to Equius. He’s almost certainly not asleep and probably just wanted to free himself from whatever strange gathering the three of you had put together. If those bags under his eyes speak for anything, he probably doesn’t sleep much at all. The treehouse is scattered and cluttered and crisp with the smell of metal and blood, which aren’t that different at all, and instead of reminding you of Bro it reminds you of him. That stings more than the alcohol marinating your poor arms.

“...how do you do that?”

“Do what?”

Vriska waves a hand noncommittally through the air and does her best to flatten out her features to the look of blankness you have on all the time. “Feel nothing, show nothing. Believe me when I say, Strider, I know allllllll of the gossip around here, but the only things I know about you are the things you want people to know. You’re a nut in a world void of some quality nutcrackers.” 

“Ask Dave, I don’t do jack shit,” you respond. Vriska looks at you again, and it’s a little harder to stay unphased by how sincere she looks. You guess she’s taking the mantra  _ what’s said in the treehouse stays in the treehouse  _ more seriously than you ever do.

Either way, the image is broken when her next words come out clipped and annoyed, “That’s the problem! Dave talks and talks and talks and it’s so  _ obvious _ what he’s feeling because his heart is sewn on the inside of his sleeve and he’s wearing the shirt inside out. You don’t talk to people you don’t know or care about, and even then don’t talk much at all. Dirk Strider, enigma, and frankly! It’s starting to get on my nerves!”

Huh.

Isn’t that weird? Vriska admitting she actually doesn’t know something? You’d make some snarky remark if you weren’t tired and baffled by the frankly out of character behavior. It’s good to know she at least doesn’t have anything bad to say about Dave, because you don’t think you’d be able to hold a straight face and, more importantly, refrain from straining these stitches with a well-placed punch at her-

“Strider!!!!!!!! You insufferable robot, get out of your own head for twenty seconds and have a conversation. I doubt you sleep ever, so it’s not like you’re missing out on anything by sucumbing to the urge of some good fucking company,” Vriska interrupts, as she flips her hair at you. The beanbag you’re sitting on shifts as your hands involuntarily tighten around the straps in- what, anger? You don’t know. You’re so tired.

“Fuck off, Vriska.”

Vriska’s laughter has always been a signal of something bad happening. It’s sandpaper for your brain tissue, leaving you with a messy pulp of feelings and half-finished ideas. You’re almost relieved when it cuts off until your consciousness catches up with the real world and you realize it’s because you have a blade to her face.

You’re frozen. So is she. You stay like that for what feels like eons but clocks in at about three seconds before she pushes you away with a quiet yelp. You lay still on the floor like you’ve been beaten, like you’re gone when in fact you’re startlingly aware of every single physical sensation. The faint sprinkle of sand on the floor dances across your arms and back in a twisted little tango of a completely mental capacity.

“...what the  _ fuck _ was that?”

“Dont fucking laugh at me. Don’t. I fucking hate you and everything you are because fucking  _ somehow _ , despite the  _ actually criminal _ and  _ emotionally scarring _ shit you pull people still somehow like you. You have weak-minded, inconsequential side characters of human beings flocking around you like you’re magnetic and the only negative pole in a fifty mile radius and guess what? There are  _ so many _ self-centered assholes in this fucking world and somehow Dirk Strider, the genius blank-faced homo with absolutely no human contact and a total of three friends is the  _ worst of them _ ?” 

It comes spilling out one word after another, more than you’d usually try to say in succession, and she shrinks back. _ She fucking should,  _ you think,  _ why doesn’t she fear you? Why shouldn’t she? _

Fortunately for Vriska’s sake, you’re also disgusted at how loud they ring, and shove those words back into the dusty thought closet where they probably belong. Instead, you crawl back to the beanbag and curl up into a sad little human ball of disappointment. 

“Shut up.”

“I haven’t said anything,” she retorts. 

“Bullshit, you’re saying a lot without talking.”

“... you hate me?”

You scoff at her. She shrinks away from you and you hate that you like it. “Of course? You’re the antithesis of everything I try to be. I’ve never met someone fate favored more, even despite the shit you pull. Some of us are just trying to hold our lives together and you shred everything in front of you like you couldn’t give a damn how your actions affect other people.” 

Vriska is quiet for a second. Your words and hers mingle in the night air, and they’re diced to bits by the chirp of early spring bugs outside. If you bothered to look up from your roly-poly position of patheticness you’d match the faint sniffling noises to tears, but you don’t.

“... we’re never talking about this again,” You offer. Sleep is a blanket on your limbs.

“Agreed. G’night, Dirk.”

“Good night, Vriska.”

You’re out like a light before you can hear a response. 


End file.
